%r^^*\<'^ ^<-!.''''^*\<^'^ 'V'*^^?^'*^'*' ^ 



^: 






























<^ * 






V • 




^0^ - - - - 



^^^ oV'^^^IBf- ^>i.ij^^ ^'J^;iim^^\ '^^A 



/ .^^"- V 



^v 







^o^ '♦^'♦^ J" "V'-^:?^-' ■^**' 



















Q, 
























^ .^^^ X v^lK*- . **' ^<^ . --^W^* ..*^'-^^. • 



;* ■•.■»■' 



..- .0'^ "^^ "'TT?*' .-v <> ''^.T** 0*' V**7 



•0^ 






••- V .4? 



.0*... 



V .V '^ . -.^^^v;* .5" V. 






V* ../'V -aK*' . /\ . •-.m^'^/ .,v "^^ ',y 









THE MAIN OBJECT OF 
THE REBELLION 

FROM THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF THE LATE 

GOV. A. W. BRADFORD. 

WRITTEN IN EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND 
SIXTY-ONE 




REPRINTED FROM THE EASTON GAZETTE 
OF OCTOBER EIGHTH, EIGHTEEN HUN- 
DRED AND NINETY-TWO 



if?' 



•1 



^ffb 



^OjyyX.\ki.Q 



e\AfJ>^: 



From The Easton {Maryland) Gazette, of Oct. 8, 1892. 



n 



E publish on this page an article entitled "The 
Main Object of the Rebellion," from the orig- 
inal manuscript of the late A. W. Bradford, 
Ex-Governor of Maryland, written in 1861, and now 
published for the first time. It will be interesting 
reading at this date to those who have given serious 
thought as to the cause and object of possibly the 
most gigantic effort ever attempted for the overthrow 
of an established civilized government. 

The manuscript was handed us by a friend of the 
late Governor's, into whose hands the original has 
come. After careful reading of same, we agree with 
him that the views as expressed by the late Governor 
Bradford show him to have had a more thorough and 
plausable understanding of the real objects of the Re- 
bellion than any other writer of his day or since. 

[Editor. 



THE MAIN OBJECT OF 
THE REBELLION. 




HERE are some considerations 
which distinguish the rebellion 
in which the Southern States are 
now engaged against the Govern- 
ment, from all others of which his- 
tory gives us any account. There 
have been many rebellions in 
other countries against established govern- 
ments, but they have uniformly originated in 
an oppressive and tyrannical exercise of author- 
ity by the Sovereign, which, after being en- 
dured to the limit of human patience, has at 
last driven their suffering subjects to take up 
arms and right themselves by revolution. This 
was the only means by which their wrongs 
could be .redressed. 

Unlike the citizen under our beneficent 
government, where the Chief Magistrate is 
the mere agent of the people, and where any 
act of executive usurpation, or any incroach- 
ment on popular privilege would send him at 
the end of four years at the farthest into exile, 
and supply his place with anyone the people 
themselves should prefer. The masses of the 
population in other countries, where ro3^al 



dynasties reign from generation to generation, 
have no means of relief from intolerable op- 
pression but by the strong arm of revolution. 
And wherever this last refuge has been sought 
by the suffering masses it has always been in 
vindication of the rights of the people against 
those who have claimed the authority by some 
Divine right or other similar absurdity, to 
rule over them. 

Here, for the first time in the history of 
the world, we witness the attempt instigated 
by a few disappointed and desperate politi- 
cians to excite the people into a rebellion, not 
against an established dynasty, not against 
governmental oppression, but entirely against 
themselves, — against a Constitution which 
establishes in the people themselves the right 
to say who shall be their ruler, and against a 
government which Mr. Stevens, the Vice Pres- 
ident of the so-called Southern Confederacy, 
even as late as last November designated as 
"Coming nearer the object of all good govern- 
ment than any other on the face of the earth." 

Such being the admitted character of our 
Government, and such the facility with which 
the people may change its administrations, 
whenever, and as often as it may chance to be 
administered by unworthy agents, the ques- 
tion naturally suggests itself, what has set in 
motion this gigantic attempt at revolution ? 

The pretext that the loss or insecurity of 
the slave property of the southern planter had 
6 



anything to do with it, is too flimsy to need 
refutation. One single statistical fact is suf- 
ficient to illustrate its ridiculous absurdity. 
The census returns for 1850 show that whilst 
Maryland with a slave population of only 
90,368 lost in that year 279 fugitive slaves; the 
five great slave states of the South, South 
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and 
Louisiana, the leaders in the Rebellion, with 
a slave population of 1,664,197, lost in fugi- 
tives, in the aggregate only 265. Or in other 
words, these five states with a slave popula- 
tion more than eighteen times as great as 
Maryland, lost in the aggregate 14 slaves less 
than Maryland alone ! And, so far from even 
that loss being likely to increase, the next 
census taken a year ago, (1860), shows that 
whilst the slave population of the above five 
states had increased in the preceding ten 
years from 1,664,197 to 2,069,119, their loss in 
fugitive slaves had actually decreased as com- 
pared with the preceding census, from 265 to 
196, two-thirds of whom were doubtless still 
lurking about the swamps and jungles of their 
own states. 

It is needless, therefore, to waste time in 
showing the absurdity of this pretense. — 
What, then, it will be asked, has influenced 
the instigators of this rebellion ? Men do not 
assume the risks and responsibilities of a life 
and death combat like that in which they have 
now engaged, without some powerful personal 
7 



motive, and for this we must seek, in the sur- 
rounding circumstances and in such disclos- 
ures as have occasionally leaked out from the 
leaders themselves. 

It is well known that this desire to dis- 
solve the Union and establish a separate gov- 
ernment of some sort for the South, has been 
openly avowed by many leading politicians 
there for years past. It is equally known that 
for year after year they haye been turning a 
greedy eye upon the adjacent domains of Mex- 
ico and Central America. And that those fil- 
ibustering expeditions which have attracted 
the public attention during the last ten years 
at home and abroad, directed against the do- 
minions of those neighboring states, have all 
been concerted, and the troops engaged in 
them, recruited in the South. It may also be 
reasonably presumed that the people of those 
neighboring territories, harassed by constant 
civil strifes and subject to perpetual tumult- 
uary outbreaks, would gladly embrace any 
alliance that would assure them once more the 
peace of an established government. The 
cunning political aspirants of the South are 
not slow in the perception of this condition of 
things, or the determination to take advan- 
tage of it. They have been willing to submit 
to a popular form of government and to abide 
by Democratic institutions so long as they 
could be permitted to direct that Government 
and control those iustitutions. Whenever the 
8 



time should come that such control could no 
longer be retained b}^ them, they long since 
made up their minds to dissolve the Union 
and establish for themselves such other form 
of government as was probably at all times 
more congenial to their tastes, and less subject 
to fluctuations in popular favor — a govern- 
ment of v^hich slavery should be the chief 
corner-stone, and wherein a social aristocracy 
— always sedulously cultivated in that region, 
but never certain of luxurious growth along 
side of universal suffrage — should become an 
established institution. 

A kingdom or an empire, or even a mili- 
tary dictatorship, recognizing those institu- 
tions and embracing the seceding States and 
the crumbling Republics to the South of them, 
so long the object of their avarice, would ac- 
complish their ambitious purpose and form a 
proper sequel to their success in overthrowing 
the great Republic of the world. 

That this is no fancy sketch of the im- 
agination, but a long cherished purpose, 
and one that presents the only reasonable ex- 
planation of the frenzied eagerness with 
which that purpose is pursued, is not only 
obvious to calm reflection, but is made mani- 
fest by their own admissions. Their deter- 
mination to dissolve the Union and relieve 
their aristocratic habits from the levelling in- 
fluence of Democracy, so soon as under the 
guise of that democracy they should no 
9 



longer be able to control the Government, was 
vowed by their great leader himself, many 
years ago. The veteran Com. Stewart, one 
of the few surviving heroes of the war of 
1812, in a letter to a friend written on the 4th 
of May last, and published in most of the 
papers of the day, gives the details of an in- 
teresting conversation between himself and 
Mr. Calhoun in the city of Washington, in 
December 1812. He relates that he boarded 
for some time in the house with Mr. Calhoun, 
who was then a member from South Caro- 
lina — that they became quite intimate and on 
one occasion he sought from Mr. Calhoun 
some explanations of what seemed to him an 
inconsistencv in the conduct of Southern 
politicians. He observed to Mr. C, as he 
says, "You in the South and Southwest are 
decidedly the aristocratic portion of this 
Union. You are so in holding persons in 
perpetuity in slavery ; you are so in every 
domestic quality ; so in every habit of your 
lives, living and actions ; so in habits, cus- 
toms, intercourse and manners. You neither 
work with your hands, heads nor machinery, 
but live and have your living, not in accor- 
dance with the will of your Creator but 
by the sweat of slavery, and yet you assume 
all the attributes, professions and advantages 
of democracy ! 

"Mr. Calhoun replied," says Com. 
Stewart, "I see you speak through the head 
10 



of a young- statesman, and from the heart of 
a patriot, but you lose sig-ht of the politician 
and the sectional policy of the people. I admit 
your conclusions in respect to us Southrons. 
That we are essentially aristocratic I cannot 
deny, but we can and do yield much to demo- 
cracy. This is our sectional policy ; we are 
from necessity thrown upon and solemnly 
wedded to that party, however it may oc- 
casionally clash with our feelings, for the 
conservation of our interests. It is through 
our af&liation with that party in the middle 
and western states that we hold power, but 
when we cease thus to control this nation 
through a disjointed democracy, or an}^ 
material obstacle in that party, which shall 
tend to throw us out of that rule and control, 
we shall then resort to a dissolution of the 
Union." 

This determination of the South, so long 
ago predicted by this great oracle of the seces- 
sion school, verified as it is to the very letter 
by recent events, carries with it a significance 
which it is difficult to exaggerate. 

Let us next turn to a more recent develop- 
ment of the purposes of the South as set forth 
in one of the most able expositions of their 
views anywhere to be found. I refer to a long 
and elaborate communication addressed by the 
Hon. L. W. Spratt of South Carolina to the 
Montgomery convention published in the 
Charleston Mercury of 13th of February last, 
11 



and desig-ned to point their attention explicit- 
1}^ to the subject of secession ; and warning 
them, as it does expressly, that unless those 
objects were f aithfulb^ followed, another revo- 
lution would be necessar_v to consummate them. 
Mr. Spratt was a member of that convention 
and one of the commissioners sent b}^ that 
bod}^ to the State of Florida, and maintains 
an influence in Southern circles such as abil- 
ities like his will always command. The com- 
munication is entirely too long for re-publica- 
tion but the following extract gives the read- 
er a distinct view of Southern sentiment, and 
is a fair sample of the whole scope of the 
communication. 

"This contest," says he, "is not between 
the North and South as geographical sections, 
for between such sections merely there can be 
no contest, nor between the people of the 
North and the people of the South, for our 
relations have been pleasant and on neutral 
grounds there is still nothing to estrange us. 
We eat together, trade together, and practice 
yet, in intercourse, with great respect the 
courtesies of common life. But the real con- 
test is between the two forms of society, 
which have become established, the one at 
the North, the other at the South. The one 
is a society composed of one race, the other 
of two races. The one is bound together by 
the two great social relations of husband and 
wife and parent and child, — the other by the 
12 



three relations of husband and wife, parent 
and child, master and slave. The one em- 
bodies in its political structure, the principle 
that equalil}^ is the right of man ; the other 
that it is the right of equals only. The one 
embodying the principle that equality is the 
right of man, expands upon the horizontal plane 
of pure democracy ; — the other embodying the 
principle that it is not the right of man, but 
of equals only, has taken to itself the roundest 
form of a social aristocracy. In the one there 
is hireling labor, in the other slave labor; in the 
one, therefore, in theory at least, labor is 
voluntary— in the other involuntary. In the 
labor of the one there is the elective franchise, 
in the other there is not. And as labor is 
always in excess of direction, in the one the 
power of government is only with the lower 
classes, in the other, the upper. In the one, 
therefore, the reins of goyernment come from 
the heels, in the other, from the heads of 
society ; in the one it is guided by the worst, 
in the other by the best and intelligent ; in 
the one it is from those who have the least, 
in the other from those who have the greatest 
stake in the continuance of existing order. 
In the one the pauper laborer has the power 
to rise and appropriate by law the goods pro- 
tected by the State — when pressure comes as 
come it must, there will be the motive to 
exert it— and thus the ship of State turns 
bottom upwards. In the other there is no 
13 



pauper labor with power of rising- : the ship 
of State has the ballast of a disfranchised 
class ; there is no possibility of a political 
upheval therefore, and it is reasonably certain 
that so steadied it will sail erect and onward 
to an indefinitely distant period." 

Here is an open and outspoken avowal of 
the reasons wh}^ the South will not consent 
to longer live in harmony with the rest of the 
Union. It is an argument, too, which unlike 
that which pretends to counsel us to seek 
safety for our slaves by exposing them to the 
inevitable losses from a hostile and foreign 
power to be created and stationed at our very 
threshhold — addresses itself at once to our 
common sense : We can see immediately the 
adaptation of the means to the end. We can 
understand without difficulty that for those 
who are constantly in fear that the "power to 
rise" which free labor, — or as it is here term- 
ed, "pauper labor" possess, will continually 
endanger the Ship of State, there is no safety 
but to throw such labor overboard and sep- 
arate from those who allow it a place on deck. 
Whoever, therefore, embarks on this secession 
voyage, cannot hereafter complain that the 
shipping articles were not clearly explained 
to him. "The horizontal plane of pure demo- 
cracy" — that broad deck, on which high and 
low, rich and poor, "the heads and heels of 
society," have heretofore stood side by side 
with "power to rise" vSubject to no discrimina- 
14 



tion but such as superior merit or qualifica- 
tion might impose, must be modelled no^ 
into "the rounded form of a social aristo- 
cracy, and all who cannot produce a quarter 
deck commission, must be shifted to the hold 
and as a "disfranchised class" be content in 
future to constitute "the ballast" of this new 
political barge. 

One more proof of the Southern purpose to 
separate from their former allies chiefl}^ for 
the sake of cutting loose from the republican 
form of government which our constitution 
guarantees, and we will leave the subject to 
the intelligent reader. 

In a letter written from South Carolina 
on the 30th of April last, addressed to the 
London Times b}- its correspondent, Mr. 
Russell, he says: "Nothing I could say can 
be worth one fact which has forced itself on 
my mind in reference to the sentiments which 
prevail among the gentlemen of this State. 
I have been among them for several days. I 
have visited their plantations, have conversed 
with them freely and fully, I have enjoyed 
that frank, courteous and graceful intercourse 
which constitutes an irresistible charm of their 
society. Prom all quarters have come to my 
ears the echoes of the same voice ; it may be 
feigned, but there is no discord in the note 
and it sounds in wonderful strength and 
monotomy all over the country. Shades 
15 



of Georg-e III., of North, of Johnson, of 
all who contended against the great rebel- 
lion which tore these colonies from England, 
can 3^ou hear the chorus which rings through 
the State of Marion, Sumpter, and Pickne)^ 
and not clap your ghostly hands in triumph ? 
That voice says, "If we could only get one of 
the royal race of England to rule over us we 
should be content !" Let there be no miscon- 
ception on this point. That sentiment varied 
in a hundred ways, has been repeated to me 
over and over again. There is a general 
admission that the means to such an end are 
wanting, and that the desire cannot be grati- 
fied. But the admiration for monarchial in- 
stitution, on the English model, for privileged 
classes and a landed aristocracy and gentry is 
undisguised and apparently genuine." 

Pursuing the ejaculations of Mr. Russell, 
well may we exclaim "Shades of Marion, 
Sumpter, and Pijkney, how would you clench 
your ghostly hands in agony could you see the 
men now over your very graves trailing in the 
dust the proud flag you helped to consecrate, 
and seeking to substitute for the popular in- 
stitutions for which you fought and bled, a 
prince of the same royal race from whose do- 
minion you set us free ! 

If thus forwarned by these different and 

disinterested witnesses of the paramount 

objects of this rebellion, anyone can be deceiv. 

ed into its support by the pretence of a 

16 



"peace" policy or anj^ other fabricated issue, 
and is willing thereb3^ to put in jeopard}- the 
republican form of g-overnment we enjo3% with 
the prosperity and precious privileges it has 
secured to us, he will discover when too late 
his fatal mistake in renouncing- blessings 
which he had not yet learned to appreciate. 



17 



960 



^""yJi^^"^^ y>ik'A:.%. y.^J^,'^^ . 






C' ^.J" :. 



.0^ .o-«. '^ 






'/ .^^"^ 













r: \/ ■: 









,- qO' <^-^. -.Xl^s."*" V* 



5« ^V' • 












•> 



/^ 



■ °t. 















<. 'i 



*^o« " 















'V; •♦ aP' '^♦•^ ''i^'* .*»• 'q.. *^ •• ^0 



)*..i::.%% 






►♦ ^0 



<-*:''^.!i 




















^c 



> ^0 



V ^^-y .,. 'v^^i^^^^./v^*^•:^■ 






W^-' I u?'r'V"e Pd 







